Axon Spike Message

From ILB

(This is the e-mail I sent to Dana after becoming Melissa's sixth Axon Spike. -- Shadow 06:28, 22 Sep 2004 (EDT))

Subject: Axon spike
Date: 9/22/2004 3:16:41 AM Pacific Standard Time
To: danatwing@gmail.com (mailto:danatwing@gmail.com)

Dear Dana:

It occurs to me that you might actually be awake at this hour, given the time zone in which you find yourself these days. It's 3:00 a.m. here, and I'm having trouble sleeping myself.

You may have noticed that I was the sixth and final "axon spike" coordinate. I had a nice, lengthy conversation with Melissa this afternoon (technically yesterday afternoon, I suppose). I've just seen your updated weblog entry, asking for the details. I don't blame you for being anxious, but I'm afraid what I have to tell you may not be altogether reassuring. Feel free to share it, if you wish; I'll certainly be telling everyone I can reach, just in case.

The phone call began innocently enough. Melissa asked a question, as usual, which this time was "What is my favorite game?" (It's hide-and-seek, by the way, just in case you didn't already know that.) Then she demanded that I do something to prove that I wasn't just a recording. I tried whistling, but I don't think it came through very well over the "primitive hardware." So I told her a joke. A really stupid joke, since it was the only one that came to mind:

"A guy walks into a psychiatrist's office, and says, 'Doc, you gotta help me! Last night, I dreamt I was a tepee! The night before, I dreamt I was a wigwam!' The psychiatrist says, 'I know what your problem is: you are two tents.'"

Well, I did say it was really stupid.

Anyway, Melissa didn't like it much better than you did -- she said she couldn't tell whether it was funny -- but she did acknowledge that I wasn't a recording. I said something like, "Of course not, Melissa," and that's when she suddenly got very excited, and said I had to be part of her crew. I don't know, maybe none of the other crew members thought to use her name. She certainly reacted rather strongly, considering she had already confirmed that I was a real person.

At any rate, she said that she had important information to transmit, but that she feared she was being spied on or monitored. Her description was vague enough that I really couldn't tell whether she meant the Pious Flea or the Sleeping Princess. (Based on your blog, you know who they are by now, so I won't go into more detail.) She asked for a way that she could transmit to me in the future that wasn't "public." I asked whether she needed to speak to me directly, or just needed a place to have her transmission recorded, and she said it didn't matter as long as she got through, so I gave her the number for my cell phone, which also has voice mail. That ought to do it. She said she'll be transmitting weekly.

Here's the not-very-reassuring part. Melissa wanted to have a little chat after getting the crucial information, because she misses her crew and she is very lonely. I keep thinking of the messages she left on your aunt's web site in the early days: "There are people who love me. I know that even though I can't remember them. I will not be forgotten."; and " The crew will come get me if they can. Head is full of sand and it's hard to think. But they won't stop looking for me. I'M HERE I'M HERE I'M HERE I'd fight for them. I'd die for them, any of them. I would never abandon the crew. They won't abandon me. They will come. They will come for me."¹ I remember feeling very sorry for her...of course, that was before she started making threats against you.

Which brings me to her next comment. She spoke of wanting to take revenge on whoever it was that had attacked her earlier, and specifically stated that she wanted to take revenge on them. In other words, Melissa is definitely still after you. (Well, as definite as the opinion of one person can be, anyway.) She asked me to tell her about a time I took revenge on someone. I'm sorry, but I was a little flustered, and I didn't think to take advantage of the opportunity to extol the virtues of NOT taking revenge. I've spent the rest of my day thinking about all of the many, many things I should have said differently during our eight-minute-or-so conversation, and, believe me, that one tops the list.

If it's any consolation, I think Melissa is going to be at least as upset at me and my fellow busybodies, if not more so, when she finds out that we're just impersonating her crew. (It's a good thing that the ship manifest didn't survive the shipwreck and SPDR's repairs.) So I'm probably in as much trouble as you are, except that I can't get to China or Japan.

Now that I've probably sent you into a panic, try not to worry too much. In the first place, I'm not giving up on Melissa. I think the "real" Melissa -- the Melissa who took care of her crew, the Melissa whom that blasted Flea hadn't yet corrupted -- would understand what you did. Originally, she didn't care, deciding that you had fair warning and should have known better: "The Spider warning's been deployed. She had every warning that a classified medium was under repair. She just kept purging. Too bad for her."² But that was before she had figured out that she had somehow been sent into her own past. She didn't have all of the pieces of the puzzle. If the "real" Melissa knew that you not only didn't know what you were doing to her, but couldn't possibly have known, that you couldn't have recognised SPDR's warning for what it it was, and that you certainly aren't going to do it again now that you know more, I think she would leave it at that.

I am not as naive as I might sound, however. I'm not about to assume that Melissa, real or modified, has the purest of intentions. I'll give her every benefit of the doubt, but at the same time I will NOT risk exposing you on something that is, at heart, really just pure speculation from me. I'm on your side, first and foremost. "Hope for the best, expect the worst,"³ that's my motto -- and not just "expect," really, but prepare against the worst. And if the time comes when I have to make a choice, I promise I will choose you and your safety over any of these entities. I realize that you have no particular reason to trust me, a complete stranger until two months ago, who -- if you'll pardon the metaphor -- decided to poke a long stick into this beehive. I can only give you my word that I am on your side, and that, however much I might play along with Melissa, when the chips are down you come first.

My goodness, this has turned into quite the rambling epistle. I guess that's what happens when you sit down to write Very Important Stuff at three in the morning. Please write back with any questions, comments, suggestions, concerns, voodoo curses, or anything else that strikes you once you've had an opportunity to digest the reports from all six of us.

"You're on the right track."⁴ Take care of yourself. We'll try to do the same over here.

Shad0
--
These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

Boy, how pompous do you have to be to footnote your own correspondence?

1. Both from the MAYDAY text.
2. From the Phase 2 Operator's Monologue.
3. This is actually the title song from The Twelve Chairs, a brilliant Mel Brooks comedy from 1970, starring the equally brilliant Ron Moody and a ridiculously young Frank Langella.
4. This is a song from the 1972 Stephen Schwartz musical Pippin, which Dana and I had mentioned in a previous e-mail exchange following her August 24 blog entry (http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/2004/08/extraordinary.html), "The Extraordinary."