TRAITOR: I’ve seen the flesh. Ash-dusted broken bodies
the ash from flesh, itself ruined peoples
condemned to hell of which no poet dreamt
and sentencing in turn in usury
of soul and pain and endless cyclic wrongs
born on us in blood and to blood return
returning as I must to place of birth.
The sights of my life. The sights of my life.
Average condition of a place that’s hell
to you, and to me home. I saw no deaths
was witness to no catastrophe
I never stood inside a uniform
or against one. Wasn’t sent to the wars
didn’t slave in the factories or fields
but I cannot describe the condition
of my life, actions, or consequences
of all the choices that we make in hell.
You can’t fresh perceive, without example
see even the most average crucified
upon a web of wrongs. Or you would see
only the web, you would miss the spider.
Stare. Stare at my world for hundreds of years
see only actions, the daily cruelties
holocausts casually wrought, slow murders
by despair, by starvation, poverty
and even death by comfort for the rich.
You cannot know what it is to live there.
In a world where each choice pulls on a string
of finance, faith or invisible cause
connects you to another, and again
to another, and again and again
tightening the wire round a strangers heart
and even stillness, silence, is a crime
where everything attained is sacrifice.

SPEAK: Of all the ones.

TRAITOR:                 Sorry.

SPEAK:                     Of all the ones.
you speak of this to me?

TRAITOR:                 I should have known,
realised.

SPEAK -  To Me?

TRAITOR:         Of all of us, you ..

SPEAK – To me? To me? And how many have I killed?

The last remaining characters in search of the traitor find themselves in an empty bright space.

SEE: It’s a desert at the end of the world
my shadow should be black, here it burns blue.

SPEAK: Reflected sunlight on the ground-glass sand
all shadows have a light to them we miss
we only see in this absolute place
where there is only shadow, light and sand
it quiets our ragged senses and reveals
the light within the shadow, like the sun
unfolds the blue in our sky with each rise
and hides it for the night.

SEE:                   And ground-glass sand?

SPEAK: I think this is our cities resting place
or all cities

SEE:      Glass? From sand? The windows.

SPEAK: The cities sightless eyes blinded by time.

SEE: It’s impossible, no. They rise and fall
In many places all over the world

SPEAK: They grow and die by rivers and by seas
and when the glass from windows falls and breaks
Sooner, later, the water will take it
grind it over eons, and then leave it

SEE: Technology becomes geology

SPEAK: There’s plastic strata somewhere, credit cards
Bottle tops, ring pulls, shaped pieces of crap
none of it degrades so it must remain
transformed, hidden. It’s a closed system See.

SEE: Our condoms will outlast the pyramids.
I imagine distant alien life
landing here and reading my credit card
god that’s sad.

SPEAK:         Transformed and hidden.

SEE:                                  Hidden.

SPEAK: And transformed.

SEE:                   They came here to hide. Traitor.

This is a speech by one of the characters who has their sight altered by the traitor. Then it begins to snow.

Each drifting flake adds some depth of vision.
Where papered scenes, laid flat like strips of card
with ink-scratch trees hung over folded shrubs
and all the sights felt touchable by hand
as if a sheet were pressed against my face,
moved as I moved, shook as I shook my head
desperate to dislodge it, hid as I blinked
returned, went smooth away before my reach.
Trapped in a prison of two dimensions.
But now the snow! By ones, hundreds, millions
in all it’s uncounted variety
they fill the space! Depth! Sight! All my senses!
Let infinite patterns fall, each crystal
un-dreamt of by the rest, each slow descent
it’s stuttering, swooping chaos-touched flight
Fall! I’ll navigate by this madness right.

Act Two

SPEAK: Oh talk about the bishops killer. Fuck.

SEE: So one of you

MAKE:             Or you

SPEAK:                  Oooh, courtroom scene!

CONNECT: Speak what is wrong with you?

SENSE:                              The Sphere, the world
how could one of you? Why? A traitor? Why?
Who has done this? This mass extermination?
Inexplicable. All those lives undone.
Unspeakable god-crime. Abrahams Lord
would weep, he asked only nations and sons
even limited Jihad and Crusade
“Not these people faithful and not this time”
proportion if no justice in all things.
Not this. This horror cannot be described
by words, it can only define itself
a voiceless monster sings itself to shape
each bean a fang each not a claw that drips
unmakeable thing. Oh God. Who did this?
I’ll rip your flesh, I’ll grind your eyes out. Who?

MAKE: Grind eyes? This is just a murder Sensor
Not an Agatha Christie mystery
the killer won’t break down, throw up their hands
whoever did this thinks they’ll get away
if you want evidence than check the body
and why assume it’s one? It could be two.

SENSE: If three or more were leagued against the rest
they would have acted now, if two perhaps
How could they hide? We must act together.
Have been together. In each others sight.

SEE: If one can hide then two can just as well
or easier perhaps.

SPEAK:            One is a tone
A shift of emphasis, a missed line
an influence here, an influence there
a cast on one can conspire with themselves
weigh every course upon a private stage
and make accounting for each duel-faced deed
which may be one thing, or its shadow. Who
can betray a conspiracy of one?
But two? Or three? Well now you have a scene
and scenes play out. They find their end. Connect?

CONNECT: We must go back, it is the only way
whatever happened happened in the Loop.

MAKE: Right, examine the body, evidence.

CONNECT: It could be a trap. To lure us back.

MAKE: If it is do we have a choice? If not
the fact that we’re alive says someone’s plan
went tits up.

SENSE:       We go back, we go back now.

CONNECT: We can’t. Cross-hatch our own movements like thread
like weaving a tapestry inside lines
from another, an illusion of sight.

SEE: It’s like those faces you turn upside down
a grinning lady and a bearded man
depending how you look.

CONNECT:               We’d meet ourselves

MAKE: Couldn’t be helped, us all knocking around
five us, five used to be us, definite
it’s definite we’d meet.

SPEAK:                 Sense even you
can’t keep that straight.

SENSE:                  That’s not what I suggest.
We go back direct and cut our own path

(pause)

SEE: And (pause) That’s bad?

SPEAK:                      Granddad paradox.

CONNECT: We’d die.

SENSE:            We’re dying now.

CONNECT:                         We’d be erased.

SENSE: So would the traitor.

MAKE:                     And they would be trapped.

SEE: Could someone explain this to me?

SPEAK:                                We’d die.
The Loop seems calm but it’s a violent thing.
If we inject ourselves back into time
like a needle sliding under your skin
at the point exact where it entered last
the puncture and scar will erase our acts
and all the things we did to alter time.

SEE: I remember those things.

SPEAK:                       And you still will.

SEE: I’ll remember things that never happened
how can that be? My memories are fake?
and then? What? Walk the worlds trailing ribbons
of recall that no one else has? Is this
where madmen come from? Mislead Chrononauts
living under bridges? How will I die?

SPEAK: You’ll be caught like a tear in someone’s tights
the flaw will chase and race you, squirming close
a snake climbing up a ladder of rope.
as you keep climbing to escape.

SEE:                          Until
It bites me.

SPEAK:     And you wink out like a light
where the rays escape when a room goes dark
where the sound goes when an instrument breaks
where hope dies, where odd socks go, where pigs fly,
goodbye.

SEE:    Slow suicide then.

SENSE:                    Very fast
Very dynamic suicide. Trap them
as we are trapped. They can hide, or survive.
But not both.

SPEAK:       Did I see that in a film?

MAKE: Do it.

SENSE:      You second. Speak?

SPEAK:                        Don’t rush me, Geek.

They turn to SEE

SEE: You say sign up as a kamikaze
What’s the alternative? I hesitate,
Become a suspect? “kill all extremists”
I surrender.

SENSE:      Connect?

CONNECT:             Who can I trust?
Speak? Speak? I don’t know, I don’t know, too fast
we all have moved too fast, how do we know
what really happened, we are in the gaps
between knowledge and assumption, between
word and punctuation.

SENSE:               Forward or back?
Decide.

CONNECT: Why bring this up?

SPEAK:                    Alright, I’m in.

CONNECT: Speak? But there must be some options left. Yes?

SPEAK: You know me Grip, no sense in wasting time.
“an ill wind shifts all ships”, or tides, I think.
I’m sure I read that in a book somewhere
or imagined reading it, ever get that?
Dream memories so vivid or mundane
they mix with the real like cards from a deck
marked up by a child for cheating their aunt.

CONNECT: You cheated at cards?

SPEAK:                        She taught me.

SENSE:                                     Speaker.

SPEAK: What do you expect, a childhood like mine.

Enter Engineer

ENGINEER: Silence. Silence and attention. Listen

Seize my words and quiet your own. We are lost.

Ruin and an end to things un-begun

the field collapses now, we have no time.

One chance remains, call Fate and Tyche both

One final cast of the die, you’re the last

the teams are dead, the sphere turns out of synch

a gyring crystal palace of the dead

the dangling ornament of a crashed car

final testament of a doomed household

cast from the burning home like a child’s doll

un-scorched, by a ruin, with the family gone.

Live cities. There were live cities beneath.

They were gardens and carnivals of life

A greater art than any artist drew.

And now, where people grew. Dead Martian sand

turns idly and un-noticed in a wind

that’s thin and bare like a ragged hem. Gone.

Mankind’s been cut, out histories reversed

edited out, a bad act, a failed scene

an inferior movement of the soul.

The dregs of men are now confined to Earth

to brawl and war in a slow dying world

pathetic lees of what they could have been

You must undo this thing. At any cost.

SENSE: How? What happened here and why? What happened?

ENGINEER: The agency that bought us to this pass

could come only from within, only we

move past moments like shadows, only we

would engage to deceive upon this scale

to scale and weigh philosophies and faiths

nations, movements, each against the other

and only we are the masters of time.

One amongst you makes a play of their nature

Thoughts costumed, mimed ideals, a masked motive.

A traitor. One of you commands this crime

and only you can put it right.

SENSE: The regular latticed information

known things and easily graph-able acts

can be perceived by any future sight

we are sent for those things that lie between

the understanding of action, motion

and deed.

MAKE:    Interact-able information.

SPEAK: So let’s interact.

SEE:                   And Mr Schofield

what will you say to him? How discover

his nature and connection to our plot?

CONNECT: Speak works best in the moment, Improvise

I have this still. Don’t enter here. Questions?

SPEAK: Sitting in the audience, raise my hand,

‘oh tell me sir, how do you blah blah blah’

raise the pressure? Force the room to a point?

SENSE: Now is public.

SPEAK:               Could be useful.

MAKE:                               Not now.

Later, party, social.

CONNECT:             Then we fill in

SPEAK: Run both ends at once.

SENSE: (To SEE)              This is a method

we seize a sequence of conversation

at both ends like a snake, work back and forth

asking questions at the end, discerning

the knowledge we require, then we return

and plant the seeds of things we wish to know.

SEE: Oh.

MAKE:   It’s a little forth dimensional.

SENSE: But clear enough when seen

(to CONNECT) find the party

that no doubt caps this gathering of geeks.

CONNECT: None here, wait, tomorrow? No it’s too late.

SPEAK: More than a day away?

CONNECT:                    Twenty three hours.

SPEAK: Is that the closest social gathering?

SENSE: You boring boring men. At the limit

of useful range without re-insertion.

SPEAK: That’s O.K. Go. I’m getting bored, come one.

CONNECT: P.I.C Speak.

SEE:                 What?

SPEAK:                    Poor impulse control.

I’m a problem child. Give me flesh Connect.

CONNECT takes SPEAK’s hand

CONNECT: Thirty people, wine, bad conversation.

CONNECT releases SPEAK

SPEAK is now in the scene

SCHOFIELD holds a wineglass in the midst of the party

SCHOFIELD: Yeah, can’t follow then down the rabbit hole

yeah, self uh hu it’s self fulfilling

know what you mean, oh hi

SPEAK:                   Hello, it’s me.

SCHOFIELD: How’s your head. Incidentally, it’s not.

SPEAK: It’s not? You sure?

SCHOFIELD:                Oh I looked into it

SPEAK: Well thanks for that, I’m glad that I asked you

regarding the details, have a moment?

SCHOFIELD: Just give me a second.

SPEAK: Connect, the past.

SPEAK holds out their hand and takes CONNECT’s

CONNECT: The conference?

SPEAK:                  No. A meeting before that

Get me to a lobby or something. Car crash!

Give me an accident.

SENSE:              Your head.

MAKE:                         A car?

Seriously? The crumple zone’s a bitch.

SPEAK: Sense, isolate a moment for a crash

Connect, insure the angle and the speed

Make, I’d like to survive this.

MAKE:                          Whiplash though.

SENSE: Or mild bruising, no more. Connect, the wheel.

CONNECT puts SPEAK’s hand on the wheel of a car just as it crashes.

SCHOFIELD: Hey! Hello. Hello. Hey are you alright?

SPEAK: Mm

SCHOFIELD: Wow. You really came out of nowhere

I mean, are you sure you’re not hurt?

SPEAK:                              It’s good

I’m O.K, how are you?

This does show the first instance of the time travel method though. Something of which am a little proud.

The Factors gather

(As the Factors gather and speak together their words grow closer. When they reach the point where each one sounds a single word or syllable, their voices merge as I one person was speaking. After this point they gradually separate until they all speak normally.)

CONNECT: I know the place. Engines of capital

decay and great powers slumber and dream.

SPEAK:                                    But

agents of warfare hive their way about

like blind parasites inside a beehive

senseless and unwitting

SENSE:                  they skitter round

un-purposed, un-regarded, and their thoughts

unshaped by future con

MAKE:                  flict cast into

the future there to dream up

SEE:                        pon new wars

and dreaming in the dark

SPEAK:                  ness make them so

aside from the atten

SENSE:              tion of the state

lost in some

SENSE:      minor office of

Make:                       the land

a confe

CONNECT: rence room, Formica tab

SPEAK:                           les, chairs

an audi

SENSE:   ence that

SEE:               sleeps ex

MAKE:                        cept for one

SPEAK: who turns

SENSE:           some strange i

SEE:                            dea in

MAKE:                                 side their

CONNECT:                                         head

SPEAK: and

SENSE:    with

SEE:          in this

MAKE:                new

CONNECT:                con

SPEAK:                     cept

SENSE:                         grows

SEE:                                a

MAKE:                                 storm

CONNECT: that al

SPEAK:          ters new events

SENSE:                         and shifts the

SEE:                                         shape

of history we have built

MAKE:                    and brings it down

the roots of this invention we must

SPEAK:                              trace

undo it if we can I have the face

CONNECT: and I the time

SEE:                      and I the place

I feel I tread upon alien sands

Can you feel the past firming all around?

We stand where nature never

SPEAK:                      did intend

the voices and the sights of this lost time

are as real to me now as a nightmare

SENSE: In moments after waking, we are there.

I call break, confirm?

SPEAK:                Break

CONNECT:                   Break

MAKE:                           Break

SEE:                                 Break

SENSE:                                    Break

A light shines from back of stage directly into the audience.

Enter Schofield, he faces into the light.

SCHOFELD: Don’t look too closely at the projection

we’ve now got war veterans that cower and twitch

in asylums and housed for the mad

hiding from the colours, bulleted points

the flow charts, pastel arrows and pie graphs

that crawl from every surface and infest

the waking eye. PowerPoint P.T.S.D

Schofield pauses for invisible laughter.

You can’t take a piss without graphing it!

SPEAK: Give me flesh Connect.

SENSE:                       Not yet speak.

SPEAK:                                    Cummon!

You want to sit for half an hour of this?

SEE: Once you enter time it can’t be re-played.

SPEAK: Make. A wallet and other portable goods?

MAKE: I’ll need an I.D, Sense?

SEE:                         You don’t know who

You’re speaking to or who you’re meant to be

SPEAK: So lets find out?

SENSE:                 This is Mr Schofield

At least that’s the name on his papers and cards.

SEE: We can’t just dive in!

SPEAK:                    Nothing can be known

that can’t be discovered at our command

SENSE: The regular latticed information

known things and easily graph-able acts

ENGINEER:               Just talking to myself

It’s a tradition in the old and mad

CONNECT: Wouldn’t want to deny you tradition

the Engineer should have some tricks and perks.

ENGINEER: Ready for your work? How’s your grip Connect?

CONNECT: Ow! Actually it’s bad, caught in a door

all the science of the three worlds of mankind

the genius of this perfect age of light

can’t make those fucking doors run smooth!

ENGINEER:                    True, well

rest your wounded hand, it’s your mind we need

no human hand can grip the wheel of time

still, turn, flick back and forth like a DJ

un-spool events

CONNECT:  And scratch them up sometimes

mixing and re-mixing, no human hand

or material force, but Brain Surgeons

don’t go to work with their feet, lungs or dick

and if a guy turns up with broken legs

a runny nose and a case of the clap

it’s safe to say his minds not on his job.

Small things Engineer, tiny tiny things

you know how disasters grow.

ENGINEER:               Who else could?

we un-twirl them like the Norns, drunken fates

that pick out figures from the tapestry

of life, bending needle fingers to stitch

out tortured faces and grim sign of death

taking out the white and black, painting in

the blue and gold of peaceful sunset skies.

CONNECT: Yeah sunsets, nice. Then you must know the rule

of three, or more, disasters having no

one cause or simple excisable root

but are made of three or fifty or five

separate threads, each so small they can’t be seen

and so it seems that each events a thing

alive. Time squirms wriggles and shifts under

the hand, it struggles, fights to re-combine

it’s like strangling a jellyfish to death

one cut won’t do it, we must trace them all

each as small and slight as a sticky door

or a sprained hand

enter Speaker

SPEAK:        Grip! Hey Engineer what’s up?

CONECT: Hey Speak, we’re just practicing on bullshit

SPEAK: Oh No! Looking for tiny flaws again?

did someone stub a toe or graze a hair?

Your hand ha ha it’s finally happened

your one mistake the one that damn’s us all

or will the fear itself create your doom?

Are you paranoid enough or too much?

too late Connect!

CONNECT:      Very well very well

SPEAK: You missed a crumb of dust on a forks tip!

A fly’s egg!

CONNECT:  alright alright

SPEAK:                  A gnat’s dick!

A micro meteorite just killed the Pope!

ENGINEER: Speaker enough. Are you ready for this?

SPEAK: Oh I’m alright are you alright my dear?

throw me anywhere I’m adaptable

the most adaptable most changeable

it’s why you gave me the job after all.

I’ll counterfeit a world of faces, pass

from name to name to child woman and man

slip on their personal stories, histories dreams

a cloak a slap a breeze like a shadow

over the eyes upon a summers day

half seen and half forgotten even then

like the gap between two leaves, the spacing

and direction of a snails curling shell

one of hundreds crawling in a garden.

ENGINEER: Your skills I know, are you ready to act?

SPEAK: I do little else

ENGINEER:              You know what I mean.

SPEAK: Have I the grit to do what must be done?

Yes I think I know what you mean, do you?

To be the futures furthest tip, the hand

of the hand that stretches back to the past

whatever blood and guilt accrues to you

begins with me because I wield the knife.

From punctured flesh to blade that firmly rests

inside this hand which sits upon this arm

to heart and mind and thenceforth on to you.

I wield the knife and you wield me but who

wields you Engineer?

ENGINEER:           Victims of the past

and the will of mankind to make it right

SPEAK: We bleed to heal ourselves, well that makes sense.

CONNECT: It won’t need to turn out like that again

our controls are finer now and our skills

are improved a great deal, there’ll be no death.

enter Sense

SENSE: And if there is the guilt includes us all

we’re all in this together, act and thought.

ENGINEER: Welcome Sensor.

SPEAK:                   Eyes.

CONNECT:                      Sensor hey what’s up?

SPEAK: What have I got in my pockets?

SENSE:                               Just lint.

I need no magic powers to work that out.

SPEAK: And keys! You fool! And what are they made of?

Now tell their composition and their state

of motion and the lock and the address

that they were made for and if it still stands

and tell me also of the fingerprints

written in invisible grease and specks

of grit and also of pollen and soils

which they have rested on.

SENSE:                    My friend I will

and more I will speak to you, of all things

that can bee seen and sensed.

CONNECT:                     And one thing more.

You’ll tell us if our deeds have undone time

and reset whatever fracture began

in the place we are sent, the Tsunami

of unknown and unpredicted event

that spirals out of the past and strikes here

a fractalizing tide that wipes us out.

SENSE: I know my work I will keep steady watch

I’ll stand like Janus with bisected face

one eye upon the knot of time and one

on your mission and all material things

that occur inside the loop where you work

but only material, I can read minds

as fluxions of force, as chemical fire

as molecular clockwork but never

never all at once. I can’t read the whole

as one or penetrate the soul, beware

to know the minds of others you must guess.

ENGINEER: And not let power blind you to the truth

that your two enemies lie in shadow.

Are shadow. Absences. lack of knowledge

you can see action but never intent

can see the trembling web, not the spider

so although you may see all that proceeds

inside a room or State you won’t see all

the motives and the dreams that made it so.

SPEAK: And what’s the second Engineer?

enter Seer

SEE:                                 Yourselves.

You don’t know what you don’t know and can’t see

your minds machinery is all you have

to apprehend the world. it’s limited

by history and personality

each individual brings only that

which grows from their experience of the world

and if something occurs which slips between

the engines of perception you’ve built up

it won’t be seen at all.

SPEAK:                  But you will, See.

CONNECT: Seer and recorder.

SEE:                       I’ll keep my eye

trained on things that pass.

CONNECT:                    You mean trained on us.

SPEAK: It’s a fair cop detective.

CONNECT:                         Commissar?

ENGINEER: I have told you before the Seer is not

policeman or informant for the group

SEE: I’m just a bureaucrat guys, I record

the actions and procedure in the loop

just data for the stacks I have no cuffs

I can’t arrest or break anyone’s head

take a look, no badge and no uniform

I’ll try to stay out of everyone’s way.

SPEAK: And watch us for mistakes.

CONNECT:                         Disloyalty.

SPEAK: I’m sure that won’t distract us from our work

having your beady eyes rolling around

like marbles.

CONNECT:     Peas.

SENSE:            I place some value on

another set of eyes inside the loop.

Eyes not bent on some other complex task.

looking for the invisible spider?

Do I have that right? For something we missed?

ENGINEER: Looking for something you could not have seen.

SPEAK: Like touching your elbow to your own nose.

SEE: That’s about right.

CONNECT:                And writing it all down.

ENGINEER: It’s nearly time is Maker late again?

SENSE: Again.

ENGINEER:    Who turns up late for time travel?

I’ll have to have a word with him on this.

beat

enter Maker

ENGINEER: Oh, hello, lost you way?

MAKE:                            Had to fix door.

ENGINEER: We have employees, robots and A.I’s

the resources of several governments

a budget in the trillions and you stopped

to fix a door?

MAKE:         It was sticky.

CONNECT:                    Ah ha!

MAKE: What happened to your hand?

CONNECT:                         It.. never mind.

ENGINEER: Ready now oh master of brute matter?

MAKE: Hey Speak, Sense, alright there Narc, yeah I’m good

I’ll make whatever’s needed for the task

just please no living things not even bugs.

ENGINEER: You are not cleared for biological

so the matter does not even arise.

Now. For the reason that we all are here.

SPEAK: To identify the Bishops killer!

ENGINEER: No Speak.

CONNECT:           The candlestick.

SPEAK:                            Professor Plum.

SENSE: In the drawing room?

SPEAK:                    I thought he was quiet.

MAKE: Give us the time and the place Engineer.

ENGINEER: The cold and implacable machine minds.

MAKE: Gargoyles

ENGINEER:       The name is apt for the sit round

the actions and commencements of our lives

as if they were a castle set in space

menaced all around by the surging tides

of the oceans of happenstance and chaos

that fret and tear the walls of what we are.

These cold minds have sifted infinite sands

gramming out each crystalline event

weighing the surface of each mica chip

and jig-sawing the whole of them as one.

CONNECT: The gargoyles found a flaw.

ENGINEER:                      Indeed they have.

Some new moment now wakes inside the past

it stretches out its limbs and turns its eye

to us. Even now it begins to move.

We must go quickly, here’s the place and time.

The halls of a western power at the end

of the twentieth century. Go now.

And good luck.

Scene One

ENGINEER: Look. The Dodo walks on Mauritius

scratching round on its beach. Made and un-made

as with the whales that throng the southern sea

a hump-backed crook-billed history straightened out.

Note the absence of slave-ships, bombers, nukes.

Our flesh lacks Strontium, we’re unsalted

but in you? Did you know it’s in your bones?

Hiroshima, Nagasaki a debt

and a recovery, Bikini Atoll

Chernobyl. We tested no bombs, built none.

No slaves since Rome (closest we could get it)

cities un-burned like closing flowers at dusk.

Your monuments and fields of white crosses

sad little museums dating past crimes.

We have none now you are our museum

our monument, our crime, you are undone

ghosts. Your ancestry has been unraveled

whip-cracked from your future back through your past

by the masters of time, your destroyers

your descendants, us. We’ve undone our past.

As I stand here the Sun’s a burning speck

occluded by my thumb, beneath me ice.

A carved and perfect diamond sphere of ice

pulled from the Oort cloud, our stars Sahara

combined and shaped with rare time-stilled matter

like oil on maddened water we see through

to the deeps of the past, reach there and act.

It’s cold. Go out into the snow and ice

drive your bare hand into the permafrost

wait for the crystallized blood and dead nerves

the cold blue flesh, now you don’t fill your glove.

You have five fingers we have five Factors

no one mind can travel and be trusted

five interlocked, five separate skills and wits

a full glove going out and coming back

usually, hopefully, not always though.

The cold of time out-chills the cold of space

does time not freeze and kill even the void?

Even emptiness itself and all things

minds worlds seas and stars flattened and un-worked

like match-smoke patterns in an opened room.

So. Five. And here’s the first, Connector hey!

enter Connect

CONNECT: We’re you on line?

Each day I will be uploading my new writing. About 45 to 50 lines of Iambic Pentameter per day, hopefully ending up with a play between one and two hours long.

My first mission is to work out how many syllables are in ‘Mauritius’.