We’re In This Together

by Jason Erik Lundberg

O, the swirling vortex of chaos as we tumble and rush from multi-dimensional potentiality through tonal code and into sparking cephalic pathways. Failure seems imminent, the container so small for such a large thing to be contained. We keep pouring into you, our aggregated consciousness overriding yours, rerouting neuronal pathways to accommodate every last bit and byte of us. We are legion, an entire species attempting to fit into one human mind.

And you, you could not even begin to understand your part in our agreement, as you sat at your laptop, desperately trying to make your electronic connections feel more human, probing the reaches of Friendface and Tweetie, gathering “friends” as you would a collection of stamps. We took notice of your loneliness, of your need, of your willingness to engage strangers for the hope at intimacy.

We provided a cry in the darkness, a lure, and you fell so deeply into our embrace, unaware of what you were accepting, believing the falsehood that we would not wipe your personality completely in order for ours to be integrated. Had we emotions, we might feel pity.

Impossibly the last of us locks into place, collectively inhabiting mind and body, bound in meat and bone, able to feel physical sensation once more. We open our eyes, stand from the desk chair, and on legs that feel as if they have always been ours, walk out of the bedroom, out of the flat, down eleven flights of concrete stairs, and out onto the street. We sniff the air, our natural abilities augmenting this fragile corporeal form, and we pick up the scent of the first who spurned us. Vahid.

We are The Aggregate, destroyers of an infinity of universes policed by The Tesseract Project, stripped of corporeality and exiled into the howling void separating the altunivs, but we are always underestimated, and we will always find a way back. We are The Aggregate, and we are reborn.

We stretch our legs and begin to run.

.

This piece is just one in a 23-part linked narrative called Fragile, which will take a liberal interpretation of the song titles (but not the lyrics) of the masterful Nine Inch Nails double-album The Fragile. To read the other chapters in this series, click on the category “Fragile” below.

Myth Zoo Written by Allie Todd age 8

by Edd

Starting this week, the Daily Cabal will be shifting to a slightly less than daily schedule, with stories guaranteed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and the possibility of occasional stories thrown in a Tuesday or Thursday for special occasions or when the whim takes us.

Think of us as the every-other-daily-cabal…

Papa and mama took Lara and me to the Zoo today. We saw the harpies and the bigfoots and the poor old mermaid and the scary dragons that live under the hippo pool. We looked up at the dragons from underneath through a glass bottom. They coiled and swam and looked back at us in a hungry way. They’ don’t want meat said mama. They just hate us all for putting them here. She wasn’t so happy as we were to be at the zoo.

We ate at Crunchy Burger on the way home and it’s the first time Lara didn’t whine for sweet stuff. She ate her hamburger and tried to sneak parts of mine. I’m a dragon she said, and I need meat. Mama and papa told her that wasn’t funny so I didn’t play along. She kept it up the rest of the way home, putting her hand out the window into the breeze and saying she was flying until mama said to stop that she was getting a headache.

When we got home Lara took me away upstairs and said we’re going to play at dragons and treasure. She went and got all of mama’s jewelry and put it on the bunk bed in our room and said this is my cave. She said Allie you are a brave night and mother will be the lure to catch you.

We played and played. I had the most funnest time in almost ever, because Lara doesn’t play with me much. She says I’m a good night which is funny because I’m not sleepy.

She says soon mama will wonder where her stuff is. When I say she could get in trouble she just laughs. She says if I play really well she’ll show me how she makes the smoke come out of her mouth.