In the street I feel very unsafe, frightened. Killer Angels roam the streets. With me is a small boy, I am here to protect him. He says nothing, he too is scared, and huddles against me. I mean to comfort him, but I tremble. The streets are so unsafe.
I press hard at the doorbell. My keys do not seem to fit into the lock, I do not know if this is because I am nervous or because the locks have been changed. Thank god when Paul comes to the door. Or may be not, I don’t know what has happened— his face is harsh, indifferent, unknowing, through the metal gate. He says-


Who are you and what do you want? What is your business here…
Who are you and what do you want? What is your business here…
Who are you and what do you want? What is your business here…
Who are you and what do you want? What is your business here…
Who are you and what do you want? What is your business here…


I start screaming, Paul what is going on, it’s me— open the fucking door, don’t leave me out here on the street — Paul what is this, it’s me open the door—
What is going on, es-tu Paul, Angelos?
And then he stops suddenly and opens the gate and hugs me—


Hey, I’m glad to see you,


I understand in that moment the interior constitution of Angels. They are allergic to repetition. A pattern repeated over several times creates a glitch in their internal syntax. It dismantles their operations temporarily. A momentary setback. This was the anti-subjectivity glitch installed by their Creators. Angels will never know meaning, memory or repetition. No past, only the present and no future.

 


Inside, there are a lot of us sort of huddled in small groups around computer texts, with low lights, turntables with headphones, or just like me reading the papers with coffee, smoking hash. Paul sits nearby clicking something morse code-like on a deck. And the young boy clings fast to me, I tell him its all right, but is it? We are not completely relaxed, there is edginess surround. Safety in numbers— and repetition. The music, ambient and trance-like repeats itself in tonality and cadence. Even our jokes are based on the irony of our survival, they no longer contain punch lines or set-ups. We say things like please be seated please be seated please be seated please be seated— and then everyone cracks up and laughs, but in an eerily repetitive manner,


Heh,
Heh, Heh
Heh, Heh, Heh
Heh, Heh
Heh
Heh, Heh
Heh, Heh, Heh
Heh, Heh—
and then a loud
Ha!
—to punctuate it.


Every now and then, down the hallway someone approaches the mailbox and starts some sort of activity. Then Paul or someone else walks over to accost them—


Who are you and what are you doing, what is your business here?
Who are you and what are you doing, what is your business here?
Who are you and what are you doing, what is your business here?
Who are you and what are you doing, what is your business here?
Who are you and what are you doing, what is your business here?—


And then the person walks away, we are left with these small explosive gadgets to detonate under thirty seconds. Swiftly I set up the CD-Rom to descramble them. Angel codes are constructions riddled and complex. They are the accidence of infinite invention, for Angels must not repeat themselves or a pattern at the risk of shutdown. To descramble Angel code, is to become Angel. Discard past and future, only now. Only Now, Only Now, Only Now. As I become Angel, humanity flakes away, I fall into the pleasure of micro-electric ecstasy, fluid form I melt I dive I no longer am me(?) what is that, electric, ec-static switch glitch, ditch that line, flux—


I am a girl
I look like a pearl
I am a swirl
I dance for an earl for I am a spear
burning my fuse
I am a twirl, I am unhinged
I am a flux
I am a puff…


Thirty seconds to detonate the device or else there is an explosion and every living thing within a 500 meter radius dies
or
the descrambler encounters with the device. The syntax of it creeps into the nervous system of the descrambler, like a fever. The descrambler becomes Angel— but only for a few hours. The human body is based on rhythms and repetitions, it has no resistance to the endless flux of the Angel mind. The Angel body, steel and synthetic, can maintain an outward appearance and is indestructible; the human body is something else. When something vaster possesses it, it enters the realm of fable and dies.


Someone slaps me hard repeatedly, a hard steady rhythm— I hear my name
Onomé
Onomé
Onomé
Onomé
Onomé
I don’t want it, don’t, no, —
I am the sea but I am sand but I am
sun
a whale
the tail,
of a comet
whizzing
past stars
I’m the planet Mars—


The slapping is harder, steady— somewhere on the planet, blood streams from my nose—
Onomé
Onomé
Onomé
Onomé
Onomé


Please let me be, the pattern is suffocating, stop the repetition—pleeeeeeease
I am a shoal
of bright glassy
windsaaaaaaaaaaaaailllllllllllllllllll——


Black out. I hear the little boy crying.
I come to. Paul says—
We nearly lost you there for a moment. Maybe you should take a break from descrambling—
Someone pours me a cup of coffee. I have the lethal after taste of bullet bite. The music comforting: trance-like, ambient. Something buzzes impatiently beneath my skin.
Was I really far gone? I ask.
Apparently.
I am sad because I have no memory of the dive, but only regret in my body, as if it had relinquished a lover. The little boy clings tighter to me, he is still sobbing, its okay, I’m still here, I won’t leave you.
But I want to.
Someone is down by the mailbox in the hallway again. I feel a certain longing
I’ll go, I’ll deal with it — I say
Paul gives me a strange look, he says
No. You stay here—
But even before he completes the sentence, I am flying down the hallway. the little boy is screaming.
The Angel stares me in the eye, I want to say—


Who are you please go away


I want to say it five six seven times with a hard confident steady rhythm. I cannot. I merely say—


who?
who?
who?


I can barely hear myself, even to whisper is painful, the repetition hurts…
The Angel smirk-belches demonic laughter: only a split second that is infinity. Then he hands me the device. He says—


You are Angel


Someone yells—
Stop her!
But I am already out on the street, running, my little boy screaming at my side— They pursue but they will never catch me. I am a creature that morphs, I am a creature that flies, I am a creature-like steam, I am the air, a laughing hyena, a crying boy—


I am a car I live in a tree
I am a bee I live by the sea
I am a dream
I am a de—-
mon
—stration


I am a heart
I’m a spare part
I am
I’m not
I see
I deal
I feel
I’m free

 


Flight. Has it been ten hours, ten seconds or a millennium? Time no longer holds currency for me. Flight. I want to defy gravity but how can I with the breathing patterns, the steady heartbeat; the pulse of living things that pursue me? You seek to trap me, ground me; engage me in form. You will never find me, I fly, I vanish, I sing— I no longer exist for time, I am no longer a body but many…


The streets are unsafe— footsteps, blood pulse, heart beats, chants and breathing patterns, the recurrence of speech— they menace me. The secret pact of the Angelos is the enmity of Time and that which exists in it. We do not kill for bloodlust— it is only that Time, matter and form threaten our own survival.


I am neither steel nor synthetic, what I have peels away and crumbles.
I flee, I am the desert I am amongst pyramids. I am marble, granite, sand, I am impenetrable and—


I am a stone
and I am a fly
and I am a spy
and I am of sly-things
I can do sky-things
and I am pyramid
and I am pharaoh
and I am that I am
and so let my people
go, let them
go


Night, stars. Beneath me the sands shapeless, shifting, innumerable. Desire, rest. Darkness falls, mortality falters. How long has it been, my flight? Two hours, a minute, a day? I turn to my companion, he is no longer frightened or huddled. To my delight he stands upright and tall. For the first time I see his young face, he radiates – with, I don’t know what. I finally ask —


Who are you and what is your name, what are you doing here?


I am your little brother
younger now but wiser
while you sleep
I persist
you desist
rest among the stars sister
rest and have delight at
infinite infinity infinitude infinitum
rest and have delight
rest and have delight
rest and have delight
good night dear sister
good night
good night
good night
good night
good night..


How soft and startling, my soul falls deep velvet amongst heaven and the stars.

 

©1997, 2013 onomeekeh