JAWLINE ISLANDS/ARCHIPELAGO.

A jawline archipelago is an chain, cluster or collection of physical cues and tells (islands) that may be found isolated in large amounts of water or neighboring a large land mass. Archipelagos are often shame triggering and volcanic, forming along arcs generated by subduction zones or hotspots, but may also be the result of emotional erosion or hormonal elevation.
Sets of islands close to the coast of a continent are considered jawline archipelagos when they form independent landforms and may no longer be seen as exposed continental shelf.  Often the combination of behavioral attributes and physical location of these islands will be far more important than their inherent composition.
Ocean basins that are being reduced by the process of subduction may be called 'remnant tells’, ‘phantom clocks’ and ’blank reads’, as they will slowly be shrunken out of existence and crushed in the subsequent archipelago collision. This process has happened repeatedly in the geological history of the continents.

Jillison said it was a means of men control.  Security (physical, mental) versus severity of punishment.  Properties of knocking an ocean down, one by one, over and over. 

I know you're tired, he said.

Just leave, he said.

Some oceans grow domestic by their own hand.   If they raise their islands that way, if the archipelago stays alive long enough to let us know.  One day, I tried to stop worrying what I looked like to bodies of water (phlegm, spit, spots of medicated behavior.)

You told the neighbors what was going on.  You said, I would grow out of it, or you would find yourself gone.
Searched for shallow land at the back of the attic.  Listened for a whispering of things you wouldn't find impossible to forgive.
Call it an archipelago of tells, the same impostor syndrome we shared all along.  Call it whatever you want. Jillison, denial is not a way to be happier here.

Start a neck, shoulders, a collarbone clearly visible, a jawline thick and shallow, rings of bone overexposed and interconnected by what they lack.
Islands, broken into squared blocks and shards of comprehension.

You looked me up and down, got to my jaw and stopped there.  Like the whole thing was sunken into itself.  A scrape of trespass, an impermanence holding up half of my face.
After that I did my best not to ask what you think.  What good was an acknowledgement?  It still wouldn’t change things.

AUTUMN ON THE RADIO FARM.

          Radio farming was a form of agricultural broadcast dating back as far as West Hestia.  In many developing and early electric continents, techniques such as static and burn, seed saving, and seasonal pitch shifting were used to connect and share resources amongst communities.  
          Through the process of radio farming, crops and livestock could be carried across great distances by systematically changing (modulating) some property of their radiated waves, such as their amplitude, stance, fur and skin, pulse width, and frequency. By attuning to the appropriate station, the information in these radiated waves could then be extracted and restored back to its original form, thus refilling a near or faraway farm with a fresh and plentiful harvest.
          Though radio farming  was a common means of resource management in early electric settlements, to create a comprehensible exchange in this era required a demanding degree of precision and fidelity.  Depending on climate, slope, and distance to broadcast tower, the process could take hours or sometimes days.  White noise was a constant obstacle and wreaked havoc upon horses and cattle, as well as the hands of the laborer.  Often radio farmers were those with a high tolerance for atonal pain or an ability to withstand the physical strains of continuous, extended, and often incomprehensible static.

          Our radio farm was owned by old-time ploughmen and program harvesters.  The golden age had broke their bare hands long ago, there wasn't a horizon they hadn't heard already.  They stayed in the house or told stories on the porch.  They left us to work the broadcast spreader and drive the truck by ourselves.  
          Jillison said it was good for us.  It was the only way we would get the training right.  It was simple if you didn't think about it.  Touch,  motion, heat, vibration, sound.  The afterlifes weren't out loud anymore, we didn't need them to take care of us.  
          All the same, we were alone in our own way.  When we made a mistake they didn't even try to tell us what to do next.

          I rode in the back seat through the antennae gardens.  There were rows and rows of them, thin and silver and taller than the standing trees.  Sometimes a charge would jump across the tops of them and we could see a trail it left in the air.  I didn't know what the current was reaching for, it talked in sparks I couldn't read.  
          It was a brand new night and there was no on else around.  Jillison said there was repair work to do.  Her hair was thick with dirt and black dust and dig site remains.  It always looked heavier without the daylight in the way, like a pile of plaster had been put in it's place.
          The bruises were still under there somewhere, but they only showed when the suns were too used up to see. 

          We spent the hours fixing the filters and amplifiers and transistors and tubes. I knew what the current extracted and how to control the livestock that came out.  It was the kind of work that started a sweat and left you to your second instincts.  I was getting better at it.
          Jillison replaced the ranged circuits and I tried to get the fields clear.  Some nights it never changed.  Whether we were planting or pitch shifting or pulling the crops from the conductor, I didn't want to leave and never thought we would.  We had control of the static, we could keep it small and slow and steady or create symmetries in the storm, whatever station was waiting for a signal, we were ready.  We stayed awake until the wires frayed and the animals came and then we kept working.
          The buildings were far away, the blister cities were far away, the only things I could see were safe and near and straightforward.  We were as close to the original recordings as we could get.   Someone had to draw the resonance down and the radio farm was teaching us how.  
          I could barely remember the way the weather wore into the soil.  It could have given up underground again for all I knew.  When the days were done, we buried everything blank and broken with the broadcast spreader.  We brought the dirt right over it.  No one watched us and no one told us where to go.   There were acres of current we could alternate all on our own.  
          It was all I ever needed, Jillison and me, searching the static for herds to shepherd and harvests to seed.  It was our autumn on the radio farm, the only resolution I reached for when my hands were red and hard-earned and all the crops and livestock were coming in clear and alive.

MURDER THE WREN DAY.

          Also known as Hollow Born Day, Capture Day, or First Martyr's Day.  Traditionally taking place the morning of the Vagabond Month, Murder the Wren Day commemorates the first killing of the storm bird by the North Hestia children. Participants carry wooden boxes under their arms, sing the executor's chords, chase trails through a torn rain.  They wear feathers around their necks and masks of wet skin to keep the skies from breaking them.
          At the abandoned Clancy House their boxes are offered as burial plots for the storm to come.  Prayers are provided to keep the bones of the bird from burning the boxes from within.  A child may plea for a clear victory or costless season.  They may recite the names of the Clancy's before them and a list of the clouds they have captured or killed.
          The holiday is opposed by those who wish to overrun the town, command the wind, wreck at the nest until the children are naked and aching to be anonymous in the storm again.

          The herd of them stayed a half sun ahead of us.  The older ones were there, Carver, McInnis, Cota, and others. When they walled together the wind was warm blooded and whispering behind us. When I knocked down the nest they threw the seeds around me.
          We followed the fence until the houses fell.  Cota was the weakest, a crease they came to trust.  Jillison held a box and so did McInnis and Carver and me.  The strongest ones carried poles decorated with ribbons and wreaths, and positioned them where the wren would sleep.  Some wore suits of straw and bricks over their eyes.
          I held my box until I was one-armed in the dark.  It hurt to hold it there. Jillison stopped and showed me how to blindfold my body in two places at once, he took off his clothes to keep the shadows warm and sharpened his hands so the smaller ones would stay away.

          They were a herd, but they were never completely together.  Scavengers came and were given blank skin and bare names. A child would push his fingers through the air to tell them when to walk and when to stop.  Jillison and I stayed off to the sides and said little.
          The strongest ones had to haul the sky in front.  The rest of them held their handles and stood and looked.  If the eyes of the wren were red and white, they would whip the pole and pierce it there.
          When we reached the town they wrote the animals laws on their hands.  They were the last words of the wren before, a marytrology recited to reach the nest again.  Every prayer was target pratice and then the past would catch back up again.      
          There were other warnings I could have worn for them.  I tore my box in two and hung the halves around my neck.  I told them the wren wasn't what they thought, I said there was hair and skin hidden inside it.  My eyes were wide and egg white.  Jillison tried to talk to them and his lips started to sting.

          Cota was first.  He stood in the corner of the road, skeleton out, open handed.  Even his hidden teeth were showing.  He told them they could reach the other world hunting animals like this.  His mouth mottled, off-color, molding over.  Jillison looked at me and I knew he was thinking the same thing.  Every herd has a black hole they've chose to believe in.
          The shortest of them gathered around Cota and loaded the boxes around his legs.  The rest formed circles around them.  Their heads were pulled back, eyes and lips pointed up.  I could see Jillison's outsides inflating and deflating.  His nervous system was losing size of him.
          What started as sinews soon was sharper than a storm.  A clattering of kill chords and children's chants.  Their faces were fake white, shining with sweat, scarred open by scales and overtones.  Cota kept the sound growing.  I watched one sun short circuit and then another and then another.  Jillison reached in his pocket and they were pale black in there too.
          The huntings songs were shuddering through them.  I tried to cover my ears.  Jillison guarded a rope in the dirt and dug it around us.

          When they struck the matches, Cota stayed in place.  The black air was building a picture in him.  Jillison's rope kept me there, crouched over, knotted down. I tried to run and I couldn't.
          I couldn't move.  My pulse was pulled away from me.  There was an erasure where my muscles  had been.
          The boxes didn't burn slow, smoke rose from them like snakes growing legs.  The herd threw the wood closer.  The fire was past Cota's knees, his face was a fautline of forgotten pieces.  The smell was charred and leather and I couldn't come closer.  Jillison tightened the rope and put me on the other side for good.
          If they left him as cinders then I knew the wren had come.  It was the only way they could have taken the new air away.  If the grass was ash and gray then they had done what it had asked.  Only the wren could kill a call that loud.
          A solstice would pass, the suns would start over, the last of the shivering would understand where they had been.   The wren would find fresh sticks to stack over the body.  A  new nest would be built and a new brood would hatch.  The herd would find another leader and bring them there again.  It was an animal law the wren made them write on their hands, a trap to keep every one of their prayers as empty as it planned.

MAMMALIAN LAW.

          Thermodemocracy was an evolutionary political system of Themis that included elements of mammalian law, multi-chambered assembly and the endothermic code.  In accordance with the Warm Blooded Movement, free (mammalian or their immediate synapsid ancestors) inhabitants of the continent took a major and direct part in the management of the affairs of evolution, such as declaring war, dispatching breeding expeditions and ratifying adaptation agreements.  These activities were often handled by a form of punctuated equilibrium, an assembly based on popular hereditary advantage. 
          Although thermodemocracy predated cladistic imperialism by over a third of the continent, they are often associated with each other.  For much of Western Themis the ethics of mammalian law were enforced by a majority rule of biased mutations and representative instincts.  Such developments lead to the abolishment of sympatric speciazation as well as the decision to execute the entire scaled and hairless population of North Themis and sell off their traits and lineage simply for refusing to accept the dominant authority of the crown group (sometimes called "true mammals").
          As the evolutionary system advanced through Themis, it matured to take the form of a direct thermodemocracy, with two distinguishing features: the random selection of ordinary adaptations to fill the existing morphological (shape, structure, colour, pattern) and phylogenetic offices, as well as a full legislative assembly consisting of all major and minor blooded parties of the continent, including warm, weak, blue, white, broken and others.

SEEDLING OF A SEDIMENTARY SCAR.

         Sedimentary or seedling scars were those that formed only at the high temperatures and pressures associated with the process of anatomical displacement. These cross-linked lesions were referred to as index injuries, and may have been found in animal, mineral, bark, crystal, or bone.  However, many trauma markers were stable only within certain limits, and scars of sedimentary strata were not necessarily an indication of evolution or decay.
       Composition and development of seedling scars was a highly variable process and depended greatly on continental conditions at time of their creation.  For instance, small particles in the terrestrial surface may have evolved into larger scars, if layers of sleep were applied, or may have been obliterated upon contact by thermal conditions, or may even have their shape preserved, still visible, but their contents obscured by soil and shadows that were not originally present.  
       After numerous trauma markers were discovered sharing a common design, it was proposed that the process of anatomical displacement may not have been determined entirely at random, but could potentially represent a type of primitive index or attempt at documentation.   While this concept was relatively straightforward, years of additional work were required to reach a point where a lasting vocabulary of scars could be accurately translated.  The final key to the decipherment of this deep seeded or substrated terrain was made by scholars in West Themis and would come to be known by a variety of names, most notably: “the specific epithet”, “the craven fault system”, “the apicle hook“, or “the nightmare hatching.”

OCTAVE/ALL VOWEL CASTLE.

          A mid-Themis innovation, Octave, the All Vowel Castle (the "basic miracle of musical fortification") evolved to serve a range of purposes throughout the continent, the most significant of which were military, administrative, and domestic.  Although primarily a defensive structure, this eightfold fortification also featured offensive tools (such as half or double frequency towers and the harmonic keep) which could be used as a base for launching raids into enemy territory.  In continental Eris, the All Vowel Castle begun to lose it’s military significance due to the emergence of the Echoes-in-Exile and the advent of permanent acoustic artillery, as a result, Octave became more important as a statement of power and a secure location for the outcast aristocracy to entertain their peers.
          As the Echoes-in-Exile established their rule, the appearance and acoustics of Octave begun to reflect the prestige of its occupying parties, and a comfortable pitch (also referred to as the “just intonation” or “perfect interval“) was often fashioned with the walls.  At it’s peak, the castle was an influential social center for articulatory members of the culture (those fluent in raised and nucleic speech, the self-professed “All Vowel Class”), as well as a resonating structure for pronounced demonstrations and phonetic displays. Although the structure still provided protection from low levels of violence and aided in control of important routes of acoustic exchange, it’s essential and symbolic purpose was to evoke the sense of open vocal harmony that was aspired to among the Echoes-in-Exile and other representatives of the expelled aristocracy.
          To distinguish Octave from similar structures of the continent, it is important to emphasize not only the structure's rich cultural legacy, but its architectural accomplishments as well.  Due to inharmonicity caused by contours of the surrounding landscape, the thickness and tension of Octave arrowslits and walls could be adjusted to widen or shrink interior intervals very slightly, a restorative constant which allowed for particularly strong acoustic towers.  In addition, the conceptualization of pitch as having three dimensions and the concentric cardinal design were first introduced by the castle’s construction.  The term “concentric” is somewhat misleading however, as it was not meant to imply that Octave was circular, rather that it was a cross-partition of circularity itself.  This castle nested within castle architecture was an attempt to represent the true conviction of equivalences, and the Echoes-in-Exile would come to control it without visible hesitation or vulnerable horizon.

          Never would pass with a voice like that.  Not at that pitch, starting from scratch and dying on contact,  a fortification of control needed to keep it in key.  
          We had to be careful, spent enough of our life listening for emergencies, could even hear the echoes of them in our sleep.  What gets mistaken for paranoia can often become a recurring chorus.  
          It was a fortress coming down, every time we opened our mouth.  Not a tell, an eternity of tells.  Too many octaves thick, like a fortification built barely above ground, no way else around it.

          Didn’t give them a name, didn’t even try to fake one.  Whispered only to remind myself the castle had the highest turnover of any afterlife (excluding Heaven).  
          Exile was not a location, it was our only chance.
          We made sure the rooms were clear of cratering sounds.  Climbed up and down a crowd of stairs, listened for any kind of echolocation to force our way forward.   Kept it one floor at a time, caved in what acoustics we could, imagined reconstructing ourselves from decaying corridors and dismantled harmony.  
          Just kept hoping, maybe by the next room, maybe by the next room.
          Covered our throat in cut black cloth.  It was almost easy to forget the way an afterlife finds its mark. 

          Architecture was broken down by amplitude of aftermath, altered pitch and octave correction. 
          On either side of speech, there were levels of hesitation to be cleared out, tossed from the closet, or rephrased entirely.   We practiced alone, in asymmetrical scales, obtuse angles, and unequal temperament.  We recited the same empty notes until we had control of what made them whole.
          Respiration (power source).  Phonation (sound source). Resonance (sound modifier).  Articulation (speech modifier). Prosody (melodic aspects of speech). 
          Prisons beneath a new keep, often artificial or without origin and purpose.  Locked there, alone and no one listening, I taught myself the phonetics of war.

           If echoes darkened before we were ready, and they were, what else was there to do?  Arrowslits, curtain walls, under construction could only hold on so long.
          Spoke as soft as we could, still sounded like a construction site crashing down, tooth and nail clearly showing.  Still left us unprotected, naked, vulnerable to attack.  Mostly, we didn’t speak at all.
          Wasn’t enough to form a new octave defense, we had to make it work through effect, deflections, edgework.   We had to assemble material at an elevation we could hardly reach. 
          How do you attack a castle?  Slowly.  Carefully.  Not all at once.  A siege from inside, ongoing in silence, echoes of exile alive and on your side.  

THE IMPALEMENT ARTS.

          1. Registrative system of many Eris religions and reaches of habit. It occurs after the underdwelling stage, when the island is thin and whisperless. The choreography of the knife is to instruct a target and a retreat, until every standstill has been sharpened and killed again.
          2. Incidence of scrap organs. It is leftover from the first or last storm. It may be cornered and carved and torn. The eyes may be rewound and erased.  Whispers inside stretch the mouth and open the removed skin.

        At last, another Heaven.  Pins and needles the size of skyscrapers, a yolky aftertaste, a bed spilled on granite.  Vowels with their veils in disguise.  Blue ribbons in my hair.  Home.
        Outside, Jillison whittles fingerholes into cork.  He scripts static defense into star charts.  Scratches bruises shaped like trapezoids.  He spends his nights nailing frog legs to the leftover planks of wood.  Anything else feels too much like starting over again.
        He sheds and shivers and I balance him.  He is nervous.  I brace his circumference with warm temperatures.  I brush poison sumac off this truth and that.  
        Syllables blink and I hide him.    I know my words are like ticker tape.  Thin.  Flimsy.  Tasteless.  Jillison could rip them to their filaments and stomp them out.  But now, he won't even look at me. 
        That's when maybe I knew the distance that exceptions make, you can travel your whole life just to remember the darkness they kept in your way.

THE ANESTHETIZED ISLANDS.

        The Age of Sacrificial Clay was typically defined by the cyclic growth and decay of biostratigraphic research produced by the Anesthetized Islands, particularly those located off the coast of East Eris.  Within this period of vigorous investigation (a proposed Golden or Ghost Era of analysis) the superiority of the corporeal system of topography was accepted and the theoretical basis for the anatomical strata was established through the laws of superposition, including the principle of original horizontality, and the principle of lateral continuity.
        The first major biostratigraphic inquiries were completed on the islands of Local Twilight and Insentience.  These works contained tables for the movements of the anatomical strata of the five continents known at the time and marked the beginning of nontraditional methods of calculation, including formal regulation, the increased rate approach, and fine-grained soil inhalation.  In simple terms, the greater the dosage of clay administered, the longer the researcher experienced feelings of inspired or vivid concentration (the phyllosilicate trance).   Though later islands would prohibit these methods of research, early scholars considered them vital to accurately measure the inherent metal oxides and organic matter that composed the anatomical strata.
        The Anesthetized Islands took a keen and ongoing interest in the study of biostratigraphy partly because they considered terrestrial scars to be sacrilegious (and therefore necessary to study) and partly because they often travelled without the incarnate continents to navigate by and relied upon knowledge of torrential anatomy for guidance in their journeys.  Lost without a detailed cartography of terrestrial trauma and displacement, the Anesthetized Islands sought to understand the true nature of this terrain, not solely as a matter of near survival, but also as a revelatory search for regretful or rejected strata, certain mistakes of calcification ready to be reclaimed, corrected, or else released into the open current. 

SURRENDER RENAISSANCE.

          The Surrender Renaissance was a macroevolutionary period from mid-Amphitrite, used as a geoanthropomorphic bridge between the fossil born and the afterlife.   It started as a psychological movement (cognitive control, stimulus control) within intervention sites of Late Eris and later spread to the rest of continents, marking the beginning of the transfinite rift.
          The Surrender Renaissance's physical basis was its own invented version of atomism (recovery of body), derived from the techniques of classical Eos geomorphism.  This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science and literature. Early examples were the development of perspective in diagnostic labeling and the recycled knowledge of how to assess excess psychopathology or chronicity. 
          As a rehabilitative movement, the Surrender Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and, in line with general skepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among tectonic historians reacting to the glorification of the "Renaissance", questioning the usefulness of ‘afterlife’ as a term and as a historical delineation.  More recently, some historians have been much less willing to define the Surrender Renaissance as a historical period, or even as a coherent cultural movement.   What constitutes 'recovery', or a “Surrender Renaissance”, is also a matter of ongoing debate both in psychology and in physics. 

          Yes.  Jillison.  I had seven continents of leaving hints and clues, but I knew from the beginning too.  Usually building blockades instead, but yes, I could tell it couldn’t (wouldn’t) be risk free.  Too close and costly.
          Very obvious very early on.  A body of some crossover importance.
          (How fragile is the attack?)
           (Now is then.)

          Advice for a renaissance to consider:
          Captured stitches in a picture.  In an attic apartment.  In an intersecting signature.
          Sympathetic/Parasympathetic.  My face and hips and neck and stomach gained it most.   A moat of weight.  It's even in my mouth again.
          Yes, still there.

          Coming off surgery and debt.  Jillison, are you ever in a place where you actually want to be found? 
          The later you start the longer it takes.  No.  Staggered.  Crawling movement.  Senses regressed to their reverse sides.  Salt clouds in the slab of my voice. 
          Major deviations from baseline, set limits, circumstantial evidence, paradox of motion.  Hard line to walk.   

          On conditions of surrender: 
          Practice.  Practice.  Roll your scales over,  feather by feather.  Defiantly without a face.  Think about it every day.  Do you want to come that closer?  If you have questions, ask them.  
          Be careful what you evolve for.  Evolution has no intent, no planned outcome, no future beneficiary chosen.  You evolve or you die.  Sometimes afterlife may be preferable.  Don't hide from them.  (Sympathy or empathy or vulnerability).  
          Recovery is not linear but does tend to occur as a series of small (and smaller) surrenders.

          Jillison, tomorrow is never promised.  You remember that, right?
          Capitulation.  No quarterway.  Unconditional.  However you will listen to me, it’s not going anywhere.  Giving in is not the same as growing backwards.  We still have symptoms of restoration, we still have stress points and crisis points, we still have a body to know.

SEA CARAVANS OF THE VENA CAVA.

        Many historians and archaeologists believe that the Vena Cava were involved in the Amphitrite’s important oxygen trade.  Oxygen, alloyed with salt, was used to make atrium metal, a more durable alternative to wood and bone.  Sea caravans of the Vena Cava were also known to trade in surplus goods such as protein, fats and sugars even beyond the outlines of the Ocean of Torso, as objects of Vena Cava manufacture have been found as far backward as the sub-arctic island continent of Eris.
        The Vena Cava trade in pale air, the stigma of a mutated strawflower, left the largest amount of material remains: a carving of strawflower-gatherers at Tricuspid is well known.  This inherited trade pre-dated the Caravans of the Vena Cava, but a sense of its rewards may be gained by comparing its value to saffron, or later, to iodine powder.  Archaeologists however, tend to emphasize the more durable items of Vena Cava trade: peritoneum, ceramics, and biologically induced crafts, rather than dramatic luxury finds such as gold and molecular partners.
        Since the majority of Vena Cava textile artifacts have either severely eroded or vanished completely through decomposition, the best preserved examples of Vena Cava art remain fractional scratchings and shell sculptures, including the Murex, a high spined wind instrument which when held against the abdomen was believed to soften the listening currents, swiften the eyes and lips, or open up another body, an empty breath, and hold it custody for ransom.

COMMANDMENTS OF GHOST SKIN.

         In common continental nomenclature, a ghost was a rigid, reflective plate that grew out of a fossil’s skin to provide protection from various kinds of damage, such as loss of water or abrasion from waking entities.  In many once-living organisms, these forms offered an initial barrier to the external environment and compromised the outermost layer of afterlife tissue.  Beneath this, a ghost had many functions, including to waterproof, cushion, and conserve deeper tissues, regulate post-death temperature, or serve as an attachment site for breathing relatives to detect pain, sensation, and pressure.  Anatomically, the same erosion involved in tooth and hair development was also responsible for most ghost growth and reproduction.
          Throughout all eras of chronological drift, ghosts were quite common and evolved many times with diverse structure and appearance.  In Themis and Amphitrite, ghost skins covered much of the continental surface and provided support for certain recessive organs, such as those with significant exposure to sunlight or radiant heat.  In Eris, coalescences of ghosts (group ghosts, hive ghosts, or collective ghosts) were capable of simultaneous envelopment, a process that resulted in almost complete loss (or lack) of individual vulnerability according to established shedding patterns, integumentary systems, and circumstances of habitat.  By the coastlines of Nyx, even foreign or fragmented ghosts were free to move throughout the deeper layers of the Hereafter, and were widely used to facilitate error correction in afterlife camouflage or tissue discoloration.  
          Though the role of ghost scale was constantly evolving, these myriad forms often worked in an interconnected manner to maintain the conditions essential to fossil protection.  In this respect, many, if not all commandments of ghost scale may be envisioned simply as an outer surface where “hard life” has evaporated, with further adaptations in structure and function developing primarily in response to the challenges of chronological drift.  These unpredictable ruptures were known to outlast both fossils and ghosts and could be overcome only through repeated, varied attempts at closure, such as trial and error, brute force, or burying the scales.

THE WOMEN'S MORTUARY ARMY.

          The Women's Mortuary Army was a burial infantry created during the Wars of the Hereafter to defend morgue grounds, cremation yards, and marble towns, replacing men called up or transferred to the Military of the Living. Members were generally recruited from urban areas and were often unskilled in shrapnel disarmament and necrosis identification. Many women worked dissecting corpse explosives and their skin turned pale-gray due to repeated exposure to toxic and decomposing chemicals. These members were commonly nicknamed ‘Ash Cardinals’, as the discoloration of their skin was reminiscent of the funerary bird’s plumage.
          Few specialized tools or core research was available to the Army’s early recruits and on many occasions unprotected corpses ignited, injuring or killing the workers. Learning from these incidents, training for the Women’s Mortuary Army would eventually include instruction in the use of oxygen, injections, and techniques for the handling of basic decoys such as broken bones, missing limbs, and head injuries.
          Though the Army grew proficient in dismantling many variants of human ammunition, neutralization of corpse explosives remained hazardous throughout the Wars. As quickly as members were able to develop strategies to safely negate reactive material, the enemy would invariably add to or reorganize the decay process to make these efforts more dangerous. This arms race has extended past the Wars of the Hereafter and to the everlasting present, where certain methods of dissection are still whispered only in secret, like scars in search of a skin to conceal, command, conscript.

          We were out of the militia, and mostly calm.  When the cloth was over us, we followed our corpses alone.
          Jillison's breath was the color of a burned house  She carried the trap over the landscape, practicing postures, living with one permanent eye and one she lacked the preparation to move.
          The blackout portraits were born and canceled before the War came back on.  We buried them in brick walls, behind months, under ash.
          Jillison trained me how to read the decoys, how to force the oxygen through an erosion filter.  She sounded like a child on a staircase.  I was reaching an agreement with an accidental body in her place.
          We went half-wet, always outnumbered, living off anything leaking and old.  Every word was a walk through of the layover years.  No one spoke and I came to know it well.
          The War was off-white, the explosives hid without blinking.  Patients that were suffering from ailments such as gout and headaches were given holes and reflections.  A scalpel carved them an apology in order to make their legs twitch.  It was a Makeup War, a Mechanical War, and then the shrapnel was less.  

CORTEX/RAMIFICATION CARRIER.

          Cortex, Ramification Carrier is a synaptic warship with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering memory debris. Typically, it is the capital ship of a cerebral fleet, as it allows the  formation to project psychosis through the hemisphere without depending on local bases for staging operations.
          Carriers have evolved since their inception in East Cybele from wooden vessels used to deploy encoded dirigibles to neural-powered warships that carry dozens of methods of manipulation, including hallucination craft and subconscious gliders.  Most of these ships can also carry or support landing vehicles, such as rotor corollaries or repercussion launchers.
          Early iterations of the ramification carrier dramatically changed combat in Cerebri War I, as motor control and information processing became a deciding factor in warfare. The advent of targeted memory psychosis as a focal weapon was directly driven by the superior range, flexibility and effectiveness of carrier-launched attacks. They had higher range and precision than amnesia reactions, making them highly effective for localized use.
          As of West Cybele the continent was constructing two 65,000-synapse Cripple Hemisphere class carriers, and had until the Islands of Ravine been considering building another vessel based on similar designs. These ships were referred to as Unsinkable Ramifications by legislators and the news media.  Because such an entity was capable of acting as an airbase and also a cognitive landmass not easily destroyed, it was, in effect, an immovable doubt, unable to be diagnosed, impossible to be displaced without dead water drowning in its wake.

VICTORY DISEASE.

          (1) Symptom of the Natural, or Tectonic War.  Contagious in speech and inscription, it is prevalent among the peasant militia.  Those standing within the disease are rendered directionless and deaf handed.  Suggested treatments include undressing the addicted, charring the flags and fabric, turning the tourniquet until their eyes are uncircled and quiet.
          2) Reports of Victory Disease have been recovered from every known continent, including those the War has cornered underground.  

          Jillison spent the last day breaking her hand to make it clear to me.  That was her open warning, her work around way of saying there wasn't anything "natural" about it.     
          I had reasons to leave.  I'd never been great at eye contact.  I had a body stocked up in botched postures, there was a shredded screen door where my skin should have been.  I never practiced the citizen's walk the way the rest of them did.         
          So there was all that too.
                                                                                 ---
          I moved back when it was done, and I was that young again.  I don't know how, it was another trauma without a cause.  Maybe it was more shrapnel I'd inherited from Jillison's side of the war, maybe it was another accident no one wanted to explain to me.  That first week though, I didn't leave my room, I stayed in bed, I slept and slept to try and get the years back into me.  
          When I was awake, I tried to tell everyone I was past this continent and past the one before it too, I tried to tell them I was older than I looked.  I said I had a list of preconditions and post-war symptoms. 
          If they didn't believe me I showed them pictures where my legs were long and sharp, where I was holding a rifle and covered in a curtain of camouflage.  I told them to ignore the rest of it and to look at my legs, I asked them how much weight they looked like they'd lost.  They would glance at the pictures and say, "why didn't you just say so?"
          If we had lost the war, things would've been different.  If they had never started calling it "the Natural War", things would've been different.   

THE AXON MOUNTAINS.

          The Axon Mountains, once known as the Chemotactic Wall, were a major fibre range in Western Nyx, and consisted mostly of uplifted sedimentary and metamorphic pathways. Historically, many cultures have harbored superstitions about the Axons, which they often regarded as sacred due to their near immortal topography. The pinnacle of the range was believed to be in the shape of an hourglass, narrowed in the middle and possessing certain anti-symmetrical and supernatural qualities, including the ability to decelerate or even reverse the aging process of anyone who ascended it’s peak or breathed from it’s summit. 
          In Western Nyx, settlers sensed a deep reservoir of action potential along the peripheral and central Axons, with certain spiritual and synaptic cues said to correspond to peaks and valleys of the range. As a product of this new spirit of curiosity for the neurophysical world, a network of exploratory channels were established on the Axons for the first time. These routes varied in size and quality (some resembled messenger huts and other rudimentary structures) however they shared many inherited difficulties. First, was the extreme altitude of all navigable neural terrain, which often lead to lethargic signal transferring, poor memory recall and cognitive whiteouts, a malady familiar enough to be known as Zero Axis Sickness. Second, was the steep, exposed, and committing nature of connective terminals, which made retreats more difficult, especially during inclement weather and impulse storms. Third, was the barrage of avalanche messages falling from the Axon peaks, an unrelenting assailment of false guidance and junk directives, communications that could not be considered even weakly holy or divine. 
          Due to these hazards, despite a series of tactical and calculated endeavors made by pioneers, colonists, and pilgrims, no expeditions to the summit of the Axons were successful. Many of these ascents ended in tragedy and often disaster, with a number of deaths and second deaths occurring with every attempt. Unable to “conquer” the near immortal topography from a network within, explorers of Western Nyx were resilient in mapping the pathways of what inner properties and providence they could. By the end of the era it was widely accepted that although miracles from the Axons may be received by their intended, so-called corporeal targets through precise and comprehensible channels, the mountains were free to work without, above, or against them as well.

UNCANNY VALLEY/RUINS.

In anatomical geology, uncanny valley ruins represent the feelings of revulsion, eeriness and confusion elicited by observers when encountering afterlife replicas (objects of venerable decay) that appear almost but not exactly like “living” human beings.

The term “uncalley valley ruins” captures the idea that an almost passing afterlife (existing in a state of partial or innate disrepair) will seem overly "strange" to some observers, produce a feeling of uncanniness, disappointment, and disgust, thus failing to evoke the empathic response required for productive life-afterlife interaction.  The existence of anatomically displaced but humanlike entities (progressively derelict over time due to long-term weathering and scavenging) is viewed by many societies as a threat to the central concept of human identity. A number of theories have been proposed to explain the cognitive mechanism underlying the phenomenon of uncanny valley ruins: mate selection, mortality salience, pathogen avoidance, violation of human norms, conflicting perceptual cues, and varying religious definitions of life and afterlife.  In continental folklore, anatomically displaced beings are often perceived as dangerous, as with the hollow born or fossil born, whose perceived absence of human empathy and spirit can lead to disaster, no matter how “alive” or “loving” or "passable" they once appeared.  

           Stared at me like I was missing a part of my face.  Or as if I was wearing two faces, tells on top of tells.   An uncanny valley of obvious giveaways, past lives practically in plain sight.  Canyons for shadow, cheeks covered by makeup and clay, eyes close enough to crater me. 
           Deep blink, rolled over iris, blanket gaze.   A longer, less recognizable stare.  Resentment scratched to repeat in seconds or less. I wanted to understand what scared you first (recency bias, a whole life in an empty room, feelinglessness in your fingertips), how you could forget I killed myself in that valley too.

          Extinct already, first and last of no one’s kind.  There are are certain things you ought to have known by now.  At least ask.   

          Tells: watch, arms (over shaven, bare), fingernails (unpainted, clipped short), hair straight (light brown starless), shoulder broad.  Shoes flat and broad. 

           Anti-Tells: No uses of specific definition.  No standing water.   No window screens.  No pinpoints to claim property.  Ambiguous.



           Used to scrape off my skin with fingernails and rough fabric.  Carved out circles of cheek, jaw, forehead, chin, jaw again.  I was trying to rip the reflection off.  I wanted a topsoil of scar tissue, a surface level of red and violent and bleeding through.  Raw and bruised.  That was the closest I would let myself get.
          An inclination of not quite human.  Blood count well behind.  More ruins of overuse.
          Slept alone in attic eaves, stuck behind wooden doors (without knobs and handles).   All I ever said was, leave me alone.  I'm never coming out.  Leave me alone.
          In theory you could just walk it all back.  Out of the valley and back from revulsion.  You're the closest you could get without being there.

          Tells: short tempered, always getting into altercations with others (and self), hyper masculine, uses others as hostages.  Lack of anger management.
          Anti tells: Jawline perfect.  Cheeks and chin perfect.  Face bones plain and uninjured.  Eyebrows nuanced, framed by research.

          If you saw me how I see me.  If there was a marrowful of impostor syndrome in every bone.
          My face was just another valley that went on too long.  Exhaustion near the skin, sweat and emptiness.  Sounds too small for words.  A meantime too far for either of us to reach.  Ruins.

           You looked at me just like that.  Like the sky burned down (on the first day of spring).  Held your head in your hands like the sight of it (me) made you sick.  An allergic reaction, an oncoming cold, common.  It wasn’t a surprise anymore.  More than a lot had to go wrong for me to understand it wasn’t a choice.
         What was the cumulative effect?  The end of my apology?  Stay with me please.  I’ll only ask you once or twice.

THE SYLLABLES OF SPRAWL/THE SECRET OF THE WAY THINGS ARE.

         The Seven Syllables of Sprawl, also known as the Secret Language of the Way Things Are, and the Smaragdine Tablet, is a compact and cryptic piece of Hermetica reputed to contain the source of the prima materia and its transmutation.  It was highly regarded by Nyx alchemists as the foundation of their art and its geomantic tradition. 

         The original source of the Smaragdine Tablet is unknown. Although Sprawl is the author named in the text, its first known appearance is in a book written by domestic census takers between the second and third continents. The text was first translated into curse tablature on the seventh continent. Numerous translations, interpretations and commentaries followed.
         The layers of meaning in the Seven Syllables of Sprawl have been associated with the creation of the pollutant’s stone, laboratory experimentation, phase transition, the alchemical magnum opus, the ancient, concrete, symbolic system, and the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm.

         1. There was another recovery time we called our own, an ending to an era of empty threats everyone knew too well. 

         Just to be clear, they said they were studying anatomy.  That’s what they called it.  By autumn, we had worn out explosives as a kind of worthwhile armor.
         What did you expect to make of that place?  More symptoms to walk across a trench?  More coffin locks and costume designs?  Had you taught yourself to use your hands differently?  
         Lack of exposure is often confused with dislocation of memory, I didn’t realize you could still surprise me.
         There was the story about your parents too.  More than enough craters to tell.

         2. Morning came like a clear mirror in a collapsed mine.  They said the same sky was still our knot to come loose.
         There was a longer explanation, but what worked best in it’s absence?  I cried all day, circles deep beneath my eyes.  I didn’t have to say a thing.  It was a change.
         We waited to wake up, worked together on a note about changing weather and winter coats, and then you went home

         3. Still blind enough to build a backup sun again.  I couldn’t say it to your face.  I think you went to see a doctor, a kind of atmosphere resolver.  There was a desk full of letters I never pretended to read.  
         Yes, unknown.  Yes, out of focus.  Yes, coming apart.  
         Yes, a silhouette lit with matches and hidden underground.  Strictly speaking, over and over and over again. 
         I tried to keep track of  our most obvious tells.  A lump of clouds in the lungs and throat.   Survival knives.  Beginning of injuries. Scar tissue collected like it was the only way home.  
         Syllables of sprawl and how long we said they were the secret language of the way things are.

         4. You ripped a proper cut, pulled me by my jacket.  Two missed asteroids behind each eye, and then another little storm, a blackout stage, a reconstruction site.  I forgot if it was a map or a photograph of us. 
         What did it cost to pick it apart and hold it?  Your hands were hollow knots, a skeletal theory, a collection of coiled bones and skilled remains.
         It was an education in exchanging voids, another outline of chalk we wore when they broke the husk off of our skin.  The fifth and sixth, of how many now? 
         The Hereafter has the highest turnover rate of any infinity.  No one lasts long.  Least of all, those close enough to know.

         5. When I was only a silhouette and salt water, when I said a final break isn’t always a false surrender.  Different stakes at different times.
         Your dressing was drained of any liquids and left with hair and muscles preserved.  
         They linked our syllables in simple, shallow pits, and I could read them still.

         6. Another month was a mechanical failure.  It wasn’t just nothing, though maybe a reach to calling it a willing retreat.
         If we could have stayed in one place and survived.  Like captive animals, kept for display, invisible twins in our place.  I was beginning to think it would never happen, and then it was happening.
         An echo is a kind of choice, a means of backlash weaponry. You told me we could almost kill a man just by targeting him there.

         7. Traces, shadow, names, corpse.    
         On the shores of an unspoken hieroglyph.  More than one but less than three.  With mistakes of sprawl in place, it was possible to die in the afterlife and this death was permanent.
         We hid there twice for every time they passed us overhead.